Friday Bytes: CenturyLink, Colt, RETN, Ciena

The snow didn't do much damage here in southern New Jersey, but I imagine it's still tough up in Boston. Here's a quick Friday look at some other news from this week that's worth a look:

CenturyLink picked up a bit of government business this week. They have won a task order from the FCC to provide managed security services to the agency's Gettysburg IT center. The win came under the Networx Enterprise umbrella, and is worth $175K/year. Not a big one, but every little bit counts. CenturyLink had already been providing MTIPS services to the FCC for the last 5 years or so, and this is expansion of that relationship.

Colt has added Azure to its On Demand ecosystem. The new option provided by the company's SDN-powered platform is available initially at Microsoft Expressroute locations in London, Dublin, and Amsterdam, with Frankfurt, Paris, and Tokyo on deck. Colt has been more aggressive lately on a variety of fronts, and I'm curious what its owners at Fidelity have in mind longer term.

And on the vendor front, Ciena has added yet more capabilities to its Blue Planet software suite. They've introduced a Manage Control and Plan offering aimed at network service management and planning. Ciena has been steadily building broader features and capabilities onto the platform since the Cyan acquisition a year and a half ago.